


I Don't Drink (My Bitterness Is Hard Enough For Me To Swallow)

by Lilith_Valdis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Asexual and Lesbian marriage, F/F, Grief, Hinted Lesbian marriage, Jewish Character, Mention of Burial, Religious reasoning for refusing said alcohol, Sadness, Still, Well - Freeform, but - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 19:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11767011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilith_Valdis/pseuds/Lilith_Valdis
Summary: Yolanda Emmerson doesn't drink, no matter how much she sometimes wish she did.OrGrief can make people consider things they otherwise wouldn't





	I Don't Drink (My Bitterness Is Hard Enough For Me To Swallow)

The words _i don’t drink_ always came easy to me. It’s what my father would say throughout my childhood, it’s what I'd stuttered out to my peers at drunken parties, it was on my tongue when I dragged a giggling Elizabeth through a room of dancing and writhing bodies. But, the sharp smell of alcohol calls to me at this moment, from the cup the fellow funeral goer offers with shaking hands. I could forget with just a few large gulps, stop my mind from replaying memory upon memory, sway with the rest of the drunken grievers as they choke stories out from uncooperative tongues about the woman who they're there for. A living woman with proud posture and flinty eyes, not the empty casket that they lowered into the earth with tears staining the wood. I don’t reach for the cup, though, and the man stumbles away to join the reminiscing hoards, **her** voice ringing in my head as he goes. _Don’t drink, hermosas? What kind of life is that?_

 

When we toast later, gathered around a rickety table dragged from one house or another, we lift our glasses and say _to Elizabeth Greenhorn, that crazy sonofabitch, who’s giving the devil hell from his own throne_ , and no one is sober enough to notice the water in my glass. I lift it to my numb mouth, and swirl it on my tongue, wishing guilt didn't weight me down at the simple _thought_ of alcohol. It is tasteless, and does nothing for the ashes in my throat that clog the words I want to say, that I’ll never get to again. 

 

_You said you would come back to me. I love you. You’re the most stubborn, beautiful person I’ve had the joy of speaking with. You made life worth it._

 

Truly, much like the fact that Elizabeth Greenhorn is gone, liquor is much too bitter for me to swallow.


End file.
